And Then

Dec 10, 2019 — Rock music, as director Wim Wenders once joked in an interview, offered to him and other Germans of his generation the “only alternative to Beethoven.” There is likely as much truth as hyper­­bole in the statement; considering the role that...

Dec 6, 2019 — Starting this weekend on the Criterion Channel, you’ll be able to steal some time with one of cinema’s most pulse-pounding subgenres. In the heist movie, even the most perfectly planned crimes run the risk of going awry, putting the mettle...

Nov 18, 2019 — One of the most ambitious feature debuts in recent cinema, Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still is a daunting challenge for any viewer: not only does this nearly four-hour cri de coeur plunge audiences into the spiritual desolation of China’s...

Nov 15, 2019 — This week’s highlights take us from post-apocalyptic cityscapes to the deepest jungles of Southeast Asia, from the sound stages of Hollywood to the coal mines of West Virginia.

Nov 8, 2019 — This weekend on the Criterion Channel, we’re presenting a case file on some of our favorite films about espionage, eavesdropping, and paranoia, as the eight-feature program Caught on Tape starts rolling on Sunday. From the analog surveillance of iconic seventies...

Oct 24, 2019 — A retrospective in Vienna focuses on the guerrilla heroes of partisan cinema.

Oct 24, 2019 — With deafening footfalls and an earsplitting roar, Gojira, known in the West as Godzilla, first thundered into Japan’s movie houses on November 3, 1954. Six and a half decades later, the monster presides over an international entertainment franchise, having starred...

Oct 21, 2019 — Songbook If you weren’t a devotee of the Cantopop world in the early 1990s, the casting of Faye Wong in Wong Kar-wai’s Chungking Express (1994) may not have caught your attention. Starring in her first major role, the singer looked...

Oct 10, 2019 — Dark Passages Where the sea and the city meet, they corrupt each other. Around docks, the ocean’s margins are scummy with oil and floating garbage; the water corrodes hulls, encrusts pilings, and slimes steps. Ports cater to men who come...

Oct 8, 2019 — In 1942, Ernst Lubitsch made one of the riskiest movies of his career: a hybrid of suspense, satire, and screwball comedy that took a real-life crisis—the Nazi occupation of Poland—as its backdrop. While critics have long credited the ingenious screenplay...